LearnmoreMN Blog

STEM inequity starts early

By Yvonne Ng, January guest blogger

As a new mother, I’m seeing STEM education efforts through a slightly different lens. It is important for me to be sure that my son and his classmates have every opportunity to be employable in our high tech future (so he can get a good paying job, move out of the house, and if I raise him right, tend to my husband and me in our old age!).

But seriously, I’m not the only one. Efforts by organizations like Generation: Next and Minnesota Compass are trying to ensure that our educational system unlocks the potential of all our children.

In Minnesota, this is particularly important, not just for our bastion of biotech firms, but also for manufacturing and engineering companies. Having conducted interviews for my husband’s engineering services company, I have seen firsthand how difficult it is to find candidates with the required technology and education.

The need for a local STEM talent pool will only increase. At a recent medical convention, the buzz was about “onshoring.” China’s rising fuel costs and standard of living is bringing manufacturing jobs back to the States. This means that our educational system must produce quality STEM professionals — thus employable in the future will mean “STEM ready.”

However, I am concerned that the indicators used by these initiatives lack a key feature. Don’t get me wrong: the reading and math benchmarks make sense, though I know there is debate about whether the timing is soon enough for math to intervene. However, the items are all very, well, “heady” while studies show that it is experience in STEM related activities that affect competence, confidence and comfort — especially in currently underrepresented populations of females and those from financially challenged homes. I’m concerned that without full appreciation of certain experiences in STEM-readiness, we may unintentionally leave our population largely untapped.

For example, spatial, not mathematics, tests are considered the best indicator for success in STEM areas [Root-Bernstein, Can women be creative scientists?]. Spatial is defined as folding 2D shapes into 3D, rotating objects in one’s mind, imagining mechanical motion, and seeing spatial patterns and relationships [Newcombe, Picture this]. These are developed mainly through hands-on manipulation and investigation of devices — activities that often happen before even entering school.

Experience with tools and technology are one of the missing link for girls which prevents them from experimenting, and thus innovating with technology, a necessary characteristic of an engineer [Schreuders, Pipeline or personal preference: women in engineering]. Men cite having played with these at a young age, which makes many women feel that they cannot catch up and results in them constantly feeling like an imposter engineer, computer scientist, etc. [Margolis, Unlocking the Clubhouse].

So is a child who lacks the opportunities to play with and develop these skills doomed? Not with good teaching. Effective educators teach mathematics with tangible objects to create concrete physical experiences in the classroom and link to the abstract concepts of mathematics. Inquiry experiences in class give children who have limited at-home experiences with nature a leg up. Key art and hands-on experiences can improve spatial skills.

Indirect evidence seems to support this: Girls have scored noticeable improvement in the standardized test for mathematics over the past 20 years [Monastersky, Primed for Numbers]. Students struggling with engineering drawing classes (notably, most of the women students) saw noticeable improvement when spatial skills were explicitly taught [Sorby, A course in spatial visualization and its impact on the retention of female engineering students].

An effective teacher is the link between sound curriculum and the individual child. He/she determines the strengths and gaps in students and appropriately enhances their education to unlock the potential of each student. In every in-service class I have taught, this desire to help their students achieve is at the heart of every successful teacher.

The United States is one of the few places that gives — in theory — every student the opportunity to prepare for college. The down side is that we put more burden on the teacher to provide equal access through education, despite the fact that some children start school never having visited a park, a zoo or a museum. Some have never ridden bikes, taken apart or fixed a gadget, or made paper creations with scissors, tape or glue.

These missing experiences with nature, the designed world, and tools and technology are what teachers must identify, accommodate and measure as they try to continue to give an equal education to all. Key indicators must: 1) include some evaluation of experiences that develop a child’s spatial skills and 2) be measured earlier so we keep the STEM door open to more students rather than play catch up (or worse, resign to missing the boat) in middle or high school.

Minnesota wants race to the top

By Vallay Varro, November guest blogger

Minnesota is on a roll. This summer we came together as a state and enacted reforms that clear the path to quality pre-K for all families. And now to show support for our state’s bid in the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge — a grant program to give states federal dollars for pre-K reforms like the ones we just passed — MinnCAN (link) convened community leaders across Minnesota to express their shared commitment to early childhood education in this video.

We cannot underestimate the impact that effective early education has on a child’s life. When we prepare students to succeed in kindergarten, we give them the opportunity to be high-performers throughout their education. This means higher graduation rates and more college degrees. It means an important step towards closing our achievement gap.

Right now our achievement gap is handicapping the next generation of Minnesotans and jeopardizing our collective future. By investing in early education we can begin to close it and in turn help an economy thrive, Our Race to the Top video signals to the application reviewers that Minnesotans are serious about making sure all of our children enter kindergarten ready to learn.

Twenty-eight leaders also endorsed a letter of support, illustrating broad support for early childhood learning reforms. This letter and screenshots from our video were enclosed in Minnesota’s Race to the Top application, demonstrating that Minnesotans understand the stakes of the situation and are poised to act together.

You can reinforce that message and join the community leaders by clicking here to sign a petition in support of Minnesota’s application.

A few months back, we achieved our third campaign goal by getting Minnesota leaders to  enact a pre-K quality rating system and create scholarships for low-income families. Those reforms put Minnesota on the path to closing its achievement gap, and with the help of Race to the Top, we can continue on that path. It’s time to rally together again and show the Race to the Top reviewers just how serious Minnesota is about making sure all of our children start their education off right.

For more information on MinnCAN and our campaign goals, visit www.MinnCAN.org and follow @MinnCAN. Stay Tuned for the announcement of our 2012 Goals in the coming weeks.

Early education strategies for the future

By Todd Otis, December guest blogger

As I mentioned in my last post, a coalition of early childhood organizations that Ready 4 K helped organize, has developed a plan called Minnesota’s Future. We think that is exactly what is at stake in how well we provide early learning opportunities for our youngest citizens.

The Minnesota’s Future group had as it guiding goal to develop a common agenda that could be given to the next Minnesota governor. These five basic strategies are what were agreed to by representatives of groups that work in the field and really understand what is needed. These strategies are backed up by solid research that demonstrates their value and effectiveness. More than 60 organizations throughout Minnesota have endorsed the Minnesota’s Future agenda.

What Minnesotans can do (an agenda for state policymakers):

1. Offer home visits and parent education to every first-time parent to help get their children off to a great start.
2. Double the number of at-risk children who participate in high quality early learning opportunities.
3. Implement a statewide quality rating and improvement system for early learning programs.
4. Create community partnerships to coordinate and leverage investments in children’s and families’ success.
5. Appoint a cabinet-level position to lead a statewide system of child development and early learning services.

In the short term, and in light of the budget deficit, Ready 4 K and its allies are pushing for expansion of a Quality Rating System, the creation of cabinet-level position, and making sure the current (inadequate) level of funding for early childhood education is not cut. But the need for significant increases in funding is clear, and Ready 4 K will not stop fighting for that to occur. Since only one half of entering kindergartners in Minnesota are fully prepared for school success it is obvious that we need to find additional resources that can be invested in quality early learning for our youngest citizens. Otherwise, if we keep doing what we are doing, we will keep getting what we are getting. And that is not acceptable.

A natural question is “Where are you going to get the money?” in the face of a $6.2 billion deficit. My answer is: change how we budget to a system like one adopted in Washington state and Iowa: Budgeting for Outcomes. BFO provides the opportunity to look at spending with fresh eyes and establish priorities on clear outcomes. When that occurred in Iowa, then Governor Tom Vilsak saw the wisdom in significantly increasing funding in early childhood education. That change could happen here: the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce has embraced such an approach. (BFO is silent as to whether taxes should go up or not; it is not a stalking horse for excessive budget cuts, as some fear.)

Several other influential groups have embraced all or some of the proven strategies proposed by the Minnesota’s Future allies, including the foundations in the School Readiness Funders Coalition; the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation; and the United Way. The momentum for change has grown. Most encouraging of all, Governor-elect Dayton strongly supports a significant increase in funding of early care and education.

Ultimately, however, there is no more powerful ally in pushing an effective early childhood agenda than the citizens of our state. K-12 and higher education have a strong stake in improving early learning in Minnesota. After all, early childhood education is the foundation of our state's entire system of education.

How to rebuild the foundation of Minnesota’s education system

By Todd Otis, December guest blogger

How do we know if things are getting better or worse in the world of early childhood? Early childhood education is a complex field with many players and components. In order to help the state move in a positive direction, and to gauge the impact of an array of programs and settings that young children find themselves in, it is important to have an agreed upon way of “keeping score.” In this case we need to “keep score” of our youngest children’s school readiness.

Our state conducts an annual “Minnesota School Readiness Study,” an assessment based on the observations of trained kindergarten teachers who know what to look for in terms of the skills and attributes of entering kindergarteners. The study provides a statistically valid sampling of school readiness. The assessment tool used is called the Work Sampling System and it turns out that it is a pretty good predictor of future school achievement, such as third grade reading skills. Ready 4 K’s mission is to “move the needle” of the number who are fully proficient from the current 50% to 100% — a goal the state of Minnesota shares.

A coalition of early childhood organizations* that Ready 4 K has helped to organize, has met regularly since March 2009 to develop a policy game plan for achieving that goal. This unified effort is the first time the early childhood community has come together this way. We have called our plan Minnesota’s Future, because we think that is exactly what is at stake in how well we provide early learning opportunities for our youngest citizens.

We are guided by this vision:

• Children have access to high quality early childhood experiences
• Parents are recognized and supported as their children’s most important teachers
• Families and other adults in a child’s life are supported in helping children succeed
• Communities embrace a collective responsibility for children’s success

It all boils down to providing a lot more children with access to quality early learning settings when they are in the care of others, and a lot more widespread parent education and support in raising their children.

The appropriate focus is on children in the lowest income families because the annual state assessment correlates not being ready closely with low income. Moreover, if at-risk children have access to quality programs, that is where the biggest return on investment occurs, according to Dr. Art Rolnick.

Perhaps the most important words in describing any meaningful policy agenda that will actually improve school readiness are “access to quality early learning.” A powerful demonstration of the importance of quality came in a study done by the Minnesota Department of Human Services five years ago, in which children in 22 accredited centers were assessed for their school readiness, using the same Work Sampling tool that the Department of Education uses in its annual assessment. Instead of numbers in the 40s or 50s, the percentages were in the 70s and 80s, for measurements of proficiency in language, literacy, social emotional development and all the other key indicators that go into school readiness. Quality really matters.

*Coalition members: Child Care Works, Minnesota Association for the Education of Young Children/Minnesota School Age Alliance, Minnesota Association of Family and Early Education, Minnesota Child Care Association, Minnesota Child Care Resource and Referral Network, Minnesota Coalition of Targeted Home Visiting, Minnesota Community Education Association, Minnesota Head Start Association, Ready 4 K.

Quality early learning pays dividends

By Todd Otis, December guest blogger

I am going to start with a story about my mother 40 years ago, sitting in a dentist’s chair in New York City, shortly after she had moved there from St. Paul. The dentist was staring into her mouth, muttering small exclamations of approval and finally he blurted out, “Louise, are you from Minnesota?” My mother said that yes indeed she was. The dentist replied, “This is the finest dental work I have ever seen. I figured you were from Minnesota.”

Apparently our dentists were (and probably still are) world class. My dream is that not too long from now people will be able to say that about Minnesota’s system of education. Not that it is just solid, but that it is the best. So Minnesota graduates on the job anywhere in the world would be identifiable by their outstanding skills and personal qualities.

Unfortunately, the Minnesota “feeder system” for higher education is facing major challenges.

The red flags for education in Minnesota include the fact that only one-half of entering kindergartners start school fully prepared for success; annually 100,000 Minnesota students do not graduate from high school on time; and Minnesota has one of the worst achievement gaps between white students and students of color in the entire United States. Minnesota, which had prided itself on major investment in education, has fallen to the middle of the pack among the states.

A startling percentage of the budget in higher education in Minnesota goes toward remediation. I am totally convinced that if all children started school fully prepared, that number would go down dramatically. K-12 will perform markedly better when all the children are “Ready 4 K.”

Minnesota needs to regroup and move again toward educational greatness, and it all begins in the youngest years. The mission of my organization is to move the needle from 50% to 100% of entering kindergartners, ready for kindergarten. It is important, because quality early learning pays dividends, both to the students and to society, for years to come. Let me share a few facts from one of the longitudinal studies, the Abcedarian Project in North Carolina, to show the impact quality early learning can make on higher education.

The Abcedarian Project was a carefully controlled study with 57 infants from low-income families randomly selected to receive high quality early care and education and 54 children from a non-treated group. The treated children received full-time high quality care from infancy through age 5. The Executive Summary of the longitudinal study found that:

• “Young adults who received early educational intervention had significantly higher mental test score from toddlerhood through age 21.”
• “Reading achievement score were consistently higher for individuals with early intervention. Treatment effect sizes remained large from primary school through age 21.
• “Those with treatment were significantly more likely to be in school at age 21 ? 40% of the intervention group compared to 20% of the control group.
• “A significant difference was also found for the percent of young adults who ever attended a four-year college. About 35% of the young adults in the intervention group had either graduated...or at the time of assessment were attending a four-year college or university. In contrast only about 14% in the control group had done so.”

The bottom line is that quality early learning has benefits that last for life. In terms of private and public benefits, economist Dr. Art Rolnick maintains that investment in quality early learning for at-risk kids provides the highest return on investment of any public investment. Period. His claim has not been rebutted.

Entering kindergartners are the “raw material” our K-12 system must work with. It is unconscionable that Minnesota permits half the children to enter without the skills and attributes they need to succeed educationally. Minnesota only devotes 1% of the state budget to what are arguably the most formative years in any person’s life. While parents are of paramount importance as their children first and most important teachers, Minnesota does an inadequate job of providing economically challenged, working parents access to quality early learning for their children.

In my next blog post I will tell you what Ready 4 K and our allies doing to solve the problem. For now let me leave you with this thought and/or question:

Why can’t Minnesota start to think of our education system as one, coherent whole, with three components that need to coordinate and cooperate better: early childhood; K-12; and post-secondary (public and private)?

Why can’t we identify milestone goals and metrics to chart progress, and then cooperatively go about meeting the goals, measuring our success? Rather than fighting one another for funding at the Capitol, why can’t the three systems work together? For example, Ready 4 K wants 100% children ready for kindergarten and Growth and Justice wants a 50% increase of Minnesota students who successfully complete higher education by 2020. To quote Paul Wellstone: “We all do better when we all do better.”

Let me know what you think.

Ready for school and life: Education in Saint Paul

By Mayor Chris Coleman, February guest blogger

When I first ran for mayor and made education my first priority, I was often asked, “Why should a mayor worry about education?” It’s a good question. After all, Saint Paul has an independent school board, which oversees Saint Paul Public Schools. Well, the answer is more intuitive than you might expect.

Studies show that students spend more than 80% of their time outside of the classroom (before and after school, during the summer and on the weekends). When this is the case it is our responsibility as a city and community to ensure that all our young people have access to high-quality activities and program. Saint Paul's future economic stability and quality of life depends on our ability to connect young people to meaningful learning experiences.

In my first term, my administration made a number of efforts to address some of the obstacles that prevent too many of our students from being successful academically and developmentally. I’d like to give a few examples today. In my next post, I’ll talk more about our plans for the next four years.

Early Childhood: I am extremely proud of my office’s participation in the Saint Paul Early Childhood Scholarship Program. This pilot was originally proposed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, and funded by the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation. Through this initiative, more than 500 low-income families were given information and resources to enroll their children in high-quality early childhood education programs. An integral part of the Scholarship Program was the use of Parent Aware, a rating tool for identifying high quality early childcare providers. These two components ensure that we are providing access to high-quality programming to at-risk families; a true triumph for our community.

East Side Circulator: Transportation has always been a challenging part of our education infrastructure, particularly when it comes to connecting children to critical out of school time/second shift learning opportunities. How do we get students from their homes, to school, to after-school programs, then home again? In Saint Paul, we’ve identified a promising answer to these questions that we call Circulators. In 2007, inspired by the efforts of parents on the West Side, we piloted a neighborhood bus on the East Side, connecting students to libraries, recreation centers and other learning hubs. That first year, more than 2,100 rides were given by the free service. In the summer of 2008, that number increased nearly 100 percent to more than 4,200 rides. Finally, two years ago, we were able to create a free year-round circulator, connecting students to learning opportunities each day.

College Access: As Kent Pekel and others have explained so well on this blog, college readiness and college access are essential to our economic future. During my first term, I called together a group of college presidents, along with leaders from our public schools, to think about how Saint Paul could play a role in preparing our students to gain admission to higher education. As a response to this conversation, Saint Paul opened two Doorway College & Career Resource Centers at the Sunray Library and at the Dayton’s Bluff Recreation Center. At either of these facilities, students can get homework help, participate in career exploration and skill assessment activities, research colleges and prepare for standardized tests.

As you read over these accomplishments, what comes to mind? What more do you think the City could be doing for its students? Please share your ideas, and I’ll respond to them in my next post.

Strategies for success

By Duane Benson, December guest blogger

Earlier this month, I wrote about how important it is to invest early in the children of our community. I feel fortunate to be the executive director of an organization that is doing exactly that: the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation (MELF) is focused on recommending cost-effective strategies for preparing children to succeed in school.

Created through a partnership of foundation, corporate and civic leaders, MELF was established in 2005 to address growing concerns about the lack of school readiness among many children entering kindergarten. Built on the concept of a limited lifespan, MELF researched the existing knowledge and theories in the field; developed evaluation strategies in order to fill gaps in that knowledge; implemented initiatives to test existing theories and explore new theories; and at the close of 2011, as planned, will conclude these efforts by delivering recommendations to policy makers in Minnesota and beyond.

Working closely with the MELF Research Consortium, we are focused on three major initiatives:

Parent Aware is a pilot of a quality rating system that uses standardized, evidence-based measures to rate the quality of early learning programs; provides support for providers to improve quality; is accessible to parents for selecting quality programs for their young children and has gained legislative support. As of November 2009, there are 295 providers participating in Parent Aware.

Early Childhood Scholarship Program is a pilot of the market-driven approach developed by economists Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The program, which serves 515 children from low-income families in three neighborhoods in Saint Paul, was designed to include both a parent mentoring and scholarship component.

Community Initiatives & Innovation Grants: MELF has supported and evaluated a diverse variety of initiatives and programs in a number of different communities, all with the goal of building better knowledge about which strategies are cost-effective in improving school readiness.

I encourage each of you to consider how you could support high quality early learning for the youngest children in your community.

Invest early in children

By Duane Benson, December guest blogger

There seem to be more and more people lately who are interested in early learning and child development, and for good reason: in 2007, half of Minnesota children were not ready for kindergarten, and studies show that only half of them will catch up. I’m writing about this because we need people to understand that investing in children younger than five is essential if we want more of our children to succeed in school.

As the executive director of the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation, I spend a lot of time reading about investments in early learning, stories of success, and warnings about missed opportunities. With 90 percent of a child’s brain developing between birth and age five, those first few years of life are very important. Learning is crucial at this young age, when many parents are primarily focused on keeping their children safe, warm, and fed.

The good news is that people are paying attention, and not just the usual suspects. Business leaders are getting involved, as they are anxious to keep the future workforce strong. In fact, some of the business leaders on our board have attended the Telluride Economic Summit on Early Childhood Investment, hosted by The Partnership for America’s Economic Success. Economists like Art Rolnick and Rob Grunewald at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis are completing return on investment studies, working to persuade foundations, corporations, and governments that investing in our youngest children makes good economic sense. Elected officials in the local, state, and federal arenas are prioritizing early learning even in these difficult financial times. In Minnesota, the Early Childhood Caucus (PDF) and the Early Childhood Advisory Council (PDF) are two entities dedicated to this effort.

As a society, we spend an awful lot of money trying to fix problems, rather than preventing them. Plenty of public money already goes towards the care and education of our youngest children: in fact, Wilder Research found that in 2008, $399 million of public funds were spent on early care and education. However, only three percent of that money went towards improving quality.

Check back later this month to learn more about the work that the Minnesota Early Learning Foundation and others are doing to support early learning. Strategically increasing and focusing our investment in these early stages of life will be essential if we hope to prepare more children to succeed in school and life.